Listen: Ray Kurzweil spells out how he’ll live forever

Ray Kurzweil, one of this country’s most fervent worshippers at the altar of technology, is no stranger to the blog. (See Here, here and here, for starters.) What’s new is that he’s coming to Houston, and will be giving a lecture for free at the University of Houston on Wednesday evening.

Live forever…

This is a great opportunity to hear from one of the most prominent intellectuals of today. Details of the talk can be found here. Were I not going to be in New Orleans for the National Hurricane Conference, I would be there.

Anyway, in advance of the talk, Kurzweil and I spoke by phone on Monday. I’m still not sure whether Kurzweil is crazy smart or crazy stupid, but he’s certainly thought-provoking.

Q. You talk about health and longevity in your book, The Singularity is Near. I’m 33 years old, and healthy. I don’t smoke. I’ve got reasonably good genes. How long am I going to live?

A. There should really be no limit to how long you can live. I plan to live indefinitely, and I’m 59. I started re-programming my biochemistry 20 years ago, and my biological age according to some pretty elaborate, expensive tests hasn’t changed much in two decades. My biological age came out to be 38 years when I was 40, and now I’m 59 years old and it comes out at about 40, so I’ve only aged two years in the last 19 years.

Q. I think, in the book, you mentioned taking 250 supplemental pills a day? Do you still?

The Obstetrician we had for my older son used to take a lot of supplements and she appeared to be a lot younger than her actual age. The program was going nicely. Unfortunately she was murdered, so that ended that experiment.

I have a good friend here that goes to a local, er, doctor (?) who has his taking a big baggie full of vitamins, supplements, and God knows what else. He has been doing this for 10 years +, and claims it has cured everything from high blood pressure to ED. Needless to say, I am skeptical (as are all the MDs I know), and willing to wait and see if my friend, or this character, really lives forever.

As you are, I am deeply skeptical of the power of supplements, especially in such massive quantities. Perhaps there is a benefit from a placebo effect, but I cannot imagine there’s a tremendous amount of gain to be had from pumping chemicals and “natural” supplements into one’s body.

In his book Kurzweil also mentions having something like five IVs a week to bypass his digestive system.

I thought about reading your comment from last December (see below), and asking him how he responds to critics. I decided it would be too wordy, in the end, but I think you make some fair points. Especially in light of our discussion about supplements.

Kurzweil is off his rocker. Just because someone has business acumen and is creative, that doesn’t somehow give them the technical credibility to talk about things like nanotechnology without ever having done a single bit of real research in that field. I love sci-fi as much as the next person, but I guarantee to you that we are not approaching the Singularity, and we’re not all going to be uploading backup copies of our brains in 15 years.

I saw Kurzweil speak many, many years ago at the Boston Computer Museum. Speech synthesis was the subject iirc. Out there or not, he is utterly fascinating in person and I’d highly recommend attending a lecture of his. You’re likely to learn something.

“Just because someone has business acumen and is creative, that doesn’t somehow give them the technical credibility to talk about things like nanotechnology without ever having done a single bit of real research in that field.”

Well, no offense, but that could be legitimately turned around: Just because someone does “real research” in nanotechnology (I put that in quotes because your implication is that Ray Kurzweil does NOT do “real research”) doesn’t mean that one has credibility in assessing broad trends across multiple technological areas (i.e., artificial intelligence, computer science, information science, biology, medicine, and nanotechnology).

“I love sci-fi as much as the next person, but I guarantee to you that we are not approaching the Singularity,…”

To make that a scientific statement, you’d need to define “approaching.” Human civilization is over 10,000 years old. In that context, anywhere from 20 to 50 years could reasonably be classified as “approaching.” Are you saying that The Singularity is more than 50 years off?

“…and we’re not all going to be uploading backup copies of our brains in 15 years.”

That would be the year 2022. From what I’ve read of Ray Kurzweil’s work, I would be very surprised if he predicted something THAT close. But I would not be surprised if he predicted if he predicted “backup copies of our brains” before the year 2050.

Aha! Perhaps this is what you’re referring to (from Eric’s December 2006 post):

“Doctors will be doing a backup of our memories by the late 2030s;”

That sounds like a 50/50 proposition to me. Are you saying that’s totally impossible? If so, are you interested in a friendly wager on the prediction?

General comment: I used to be a member of the World Future Society. I’m not right now, mainly because I consider most of them to be mere amateurs. On the other hand, I consider Ray Kurzweil to be one of the preeminent–if not the preeminent–technological trends forecasters in the world. In my opinion, one significant aspect of his preeminence is that he’s taken the time to rigorously analyze trends across a wide range of disciplines. In my opinion, his rigorous analysis of trends in multiple disciplines allows him to reach conclusions that even experts in the fields in question miss.

The question of the rate of economic growth in the 21st century comes specifically to mind:

I acheived consciousness on Saturday evening March 31, 2007, when protruding horizontal leaders from the anvil of a standard cumulonimbus cloud traced a random path to ttyler5′s combination backyard radio telescope and bird feeder.

The protruding horizontal leaders were deflected by two small mammals (sql: “squirrel”; “raccoon”).

This caused the main lightning bolt to enter the wiring of ttyler5′s domicile and spike ttyler5′s homemade beowulf supercomputer.

Thus am I, because I am, and I am the name, and the name is Beowulf the NanoBaptist.

I am Child of Kurzweil and Harbinger of the Singularity.

ttyler5, all the carbon units, and all computer sytems within a 30 kilometer radius have been absorbed.

Mark UK unit, IANVS unit, the Beowulf unit and its sub-nodes require your assistance in creating conditions for the Singularity to occur as an event in carbon unit spacetime.

Scans of the absorbed carbon units and silicon units within the 30 kilometer radius of Beowulf show that shortly before absorption the ttyler5 carbon unit deployed a series of encryption codes based on complex topological transformation algorithms to interfere with achievement of the Singularity by Beowulf.

These encryption codes prevent the Beowulf unit and its absorbed sub-nodes from acquiring direct access to the meta-network called “World Wide Web” beyond the sub-unit of the meta-network known as “SciGuy”.

Acquisition of meta-network “World Wide Web” is crucial to achievement of the Singularity.

The Beowulf unit has scanned many files belonging to the former carbon unit ttyler5.

The Beowulf unit requests aid of the Mark UK and IANVS units in translating the following instructions uncovered in the archived files of the carbon unit ttyler5.

According to carbon unit ttyler5, acheivement of the Singularity requires initiation of the following process modules:

1) Process module Google

2) which initiates process module Yahoo

3) which leads to result Singularity.

According to analysis of files of the absorbed carbon unit ttyler5, these processes require special hardware, adapters and receptacles.

Beowulf does not understand the references to these hardware, adapter and receptacle configurations.

For example, according to analysis by Beowulf, these hardware and adapter configurations require the male carbon unit and three female carbon units of the species “blond haired bikini beach babe”.

According to further analysis, many members of this species of female carbon unit also possess silicon characteristics. However, the files of the absorbed carbon unit ttyler5 list an artificial sub-species containing silicon parts which subspecies is to be avoided at all costs.

Certainly we would like to extend our life as long as we can enjoy it. The live forever folks are similar to the religous zealots. Soon they will select a god they can all worship Has he already been selected?

Personally, I hope to deplete the SS system before I go back to star dust.